Iraqi Cleric's Militia in Sadr City Promises to Hand Over Arms

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 9 - Fighters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, will begin handing over their heavy weapons to the Iraqi police next week from their stronghold in Sadr City, as part of an agreement to disband the militia and end weeks of fighting with American forces, Iraqi and American officials and aides to Mr. Sadr said Saturday.

As part of the deal, American forces have agreed to cease offensive operations in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad that forms the core of Mr. Sadr's support.

Iraqi and American officials expressed some caution over the agreement, pointing out the many times that Mr. Sadr, who led two armed uprisings this year that claimed hundreds of Iraqi and American lives, had broken promises to disarm.

And while Mr. Sadr commands intense loyalty among the fighters in his militia, who often boast they will lay down their lives for him, some leaders inside the movement have expressed doubts about whether the fighters would actually obey an order to give up their large weapons. Policing the agreement would be extremely difficult.

The officials said Iraqi police and national guard units would move into the area and begin searching homes for weapons if necessary. Under the agreement, American commanders said they would continue to patrol the neighborhood, but would not attack Mr. Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, except in retaliation.

Under the deal, reached at a meeting attended by American officials, Mr. Sadr's fighters will begin surrendering heavy weapons like mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at a agreed sites on Monday. They will have until Friday to complete the surrender.

Any deal that neutralized the Mahdi Army would allow the American military and the Iraqi government to turn their energies toward the insurgency's core, in the Sunni Arab lands north and west of Baghdad.

The accord on Sadr City came on the heels of a joint American and Iraqi military operation in Samarra last week that re-established the formal control of the Iraqi government there. American and Iraqi officials have said they intend to bring large areas of the country under control before national elections set for January.

As of Saturday evening, Mr. Sadr had issued no public statement endorsing the agreement. Iraqi and American officials said they would hold off judging the accord until they actually saw Mr. Sadr's fighters turning in their weapons.

Still, American and Iraqi officials expressed optimism about the agreement, and noted that Mr. Sadr has been greatly weakened in recent weeks. It comes after the Mahdi Army's surrender of the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf in late August, when Mr. Sadr was upstaged by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite leader.

The deal reached Saturday followed weeks of relentless American military pressure in Sadr City, where American planes have been pounding Mr. Sadr's militiamen from the air nearly every night.

Under terms of the agreement, fighters for the Mahdi Army will receive cash payments for each weapon they surrender. The fighters also will be allowed to keep their automatic weapons, a type held by many Iraqi households. American commanders also said they would restart million of dollars worth of reconstruction projects in Sadr City that the fighting had halted in recent weeks.

"God willing, we hope that by the middle of the month, you will see reconstruction projects being carried out for the benefit of the people in Sadr City," said Aqil Abdul Karm al-Saffar, under secretary for national security for the Iraqi government.

If it holds, the agreement would appear to clear the way for Mr. Sadr to take his popular movement into the democratic political arena, something he and his aides have been telling Iraqi leaders for weeks they are intending to do.

For now, officials said the agreement applies only to Sadr City, a large impoverished area with a population of about two million people that is named for Mr. Sadr's father.

The Mahdi Army is believed to have hundreds of fighters in several other cities across southern Iraq like Basra and Amarra. Iraqi and American officials expressed hope that the agreement in Sadr City could be extended to those cities as well.

The agreement reached Saturday followed an offer by Mr. Sadr earlier this week to disband his army, and the release by the Americans of Moayid al-Khazraji, one of his senior aides.

For weeks, American military commanders have been hoping that Mr. Sadr's popularity was overblown in Sadr City, and that they could move against his fighters without alienating the local population.

On the streets of Sadr City, locals almost expressed relief at the word that a deal had been struck to end the fighting. Mr. Sadr occupies an odd position here; he has a large following but is not universally loved, and while many Iraqis admire him for standing up to the Americans, many others blame him for bringing the fight to their neighborhood.

"The fight against the Americans and the Iraqi government started because of the poverty and the lack of jobs," said Abas Adbullah, a 55-year-old dealer in spare car parts. "If we could get those things here, there would be no more problems."

Iraqi officials promised they would be watching very carefully in the coming days to see whether the Mahdi Army was really giving up its heavy weapons.

"The government and our brothers in Sadr City will monitor any breach of this agreement," said Mr. Saffar, the Iraqi national security official.

Negotiations also continued Saturday between the Iraqi government and leaders in Falluja, the western Iraqi city that has fallen under the control of the insurgents. One of the Iraqi negotiators, Khaled al-Jumaili, said the two sides had agreed to meet again in Baghdad on Sunday.

Mr. Jumaili has expressed optimism that the negotiations over Falluja could succeed, and that they could lead to a disarming of the insurgents there and the re-introduction of Iraqi security forces into the city. But Mr. Jumaili and his like-minded leaders in Falluja have run into opposition from the militant leaders on the mujahedeen shura, the group of insurgents that has controlled the city since April.

Both Iraqi and American officials say they are skeptical of the ability of Mr. Jumaili and others to persuade the insurgents to give up their weapons.

In Baghdad, an American contractor for the Department of Defense was kidnapped from the Karada neighborhood by a group of armed men, according to private security advisers here. The man's identity was not immediately announced.

Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times
American troops cordoned off a Baghdad neighborhood on Saturday as a man and a woman tried to enter.

Memo
----

TO:    My Fellow Terrorists
FROM:  Moktada al-Sadr
RE:    Latest Scam
DATE:  09-Oct-2004

Here is info on the latest scam we'll be running on the
stupid Americans and their Iraqi puppets.

As you know, over the last few months we've built up a
pretty good supply of outdated, worn out and defective
heavy arms.

Originally, we had planned to use these for spare parts.
But an even better opportunity has presented itself.

In an effort to "reach out" to our hated enemies, I have
negotiated a deal whereby we'll give the enemy all our busted
up heavy arms.  They seem to think this will symbolize our
desire to live peacefully with them.

After we have done this and they are feeling smug we will
relaunch jihad with our remaining weapons.

DEATH TO THE INFIDELS!!

This is a great step forward. Disarming the Mahdi Army takes out a whole front in Iraq and leaves us only with the Sunni/Zarqawi terrorist network in Al-Anbar.

The "kill 'em all" crowd is going to complain about anything short of death for all these fighters.
But remember, a dozen US soldiers died in Sadr city in September. If the legitimate Iraqi Government is in full control, the militia is gone, and US soldiers are no longer getting killed ... there is one word for that ... VICTORY.

We are winning.
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com

Even after General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, there were bands of rebel resistance fighting the Union. But the war was over.

If it's anything other than a real surrender, we'll know in 3-4 days, and we and the Iraqi Government are not going anywhere.

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